There's No Place Like Home
by mrsl488
Summary: Tag to 4x15. Matt hears the sirens and smells the smoke.


**In an episode filled with emotion, it was Matt's heartbreak that hit me the hardest. I woke up in the middle of the night with this plot bunny nudging me until I wrote it, which has never happened before, so I figured I'd better put it to paper. It's kind of a tear jerker, so consider yourself warned.**

* * *

Matt was sitting on his front porch, head in his hands, when he heard the sirens. He wasn't really sure how he'd gotten home. After leaving Elena's, he had taken Bonnie home and had headed to his house, the path from house to house so ingrained in him that he could drive it in his sleep.

He remembered having to pull over as the pain and grief had overwhelmed him. He rubbed his chest, an ache all that remained from the crippling sobs that had engulfed him. He'd sat there, in his truck, for what seemed like hours, crying until he couldn't cry any longer. Eventually, he supposed, he had driven the rest of the way home. Though, he reflected, he clearly hadn't gotten any further than the front porch.

Exhausted, he stood to go inside, hoping to get a couple of hours of sleep, when an orange glow caught his eye. Again the sound of the sirens broke through the silent night and the smell of the smoke joined the attack on his senses. At first, he thought to ignore all of it. He was exhausted, both mentally and physically, and he had enough problems of his own to shoulder without worrying about some warehouse or something burning down. But, as he turned back towards his front door he realized that the bright glow lighting up the night sky wasn't coming from the business district of Mystic Falls as he first assumed. The glow and faint trail of smoke stretching to the heavens was coming from a residential area, one not too far from where he stood. He frowned as he tried to visualize the neighborhood and where the fire was, his brows lifting in horror as he pinpointed the location.

"No!" He screamed as he left the porch at full speed, not even considering using his truck. He ran as if his life depended on it, which, at that moment, felt like it did. His legs were burning as he turned the corner of the tree-lined street that the Gilbert family called their own. He stopped in defeat as he saw the house he knew as well as his own engulfed in flames.

* * *

Growing up he, Elena, Caroline and Bonnie has spent hours playing in the Gilbert house. It was the biggest of their houses and the only one with a mom who stayed home instead of working. Miranda Gilbert had been mother to all of them, always there to play Uno, make them PB & Js or bandage up a scrape, sometimes kissing it first "to make it feel better". The fort in the Gilbert backyard was the envy of the neighborhood and one Matt and his friends played on for hours. Sometimes they'd pretend they were pirates on the Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean (though never Caroline, who insisted on being the Kiera Knightly character because "she was NOT a boy"). Other times, it was cops and robbers, with him and Elena using the fort as a hideout, while Bonnie and Caroline attempted to break in and haul them off to jail. Jeremy always tagged along, begging to play with them. More often than not they'd let him, though, initially, it was as a gopher, cleverly disguised as "a really important character", who ran all their errands, mostly to get snacks, because, hey, even pirates got hungry. Later on, the age difference didn't matter as much and he and Jeremy would gang up against the girls in whatever scenario they were playing out. Then, there were the rainy days that they would all collapse in front of the TV with popcorn and watch movies for hours. Matt could still recite all two and a half hours of the first Lord of the Rings movie, which they'd watched more times than he could count.

Eventually, the Gilbert house became the place where he and Elena were together as a couple. They'd shared their first kiss, sitting on that same sofa, after everyone else had either left or gone to bed. Upstairs, in Elena's bedroom, they'd awkwardly given each other their virginity. A year later, she shattered his heart when she broke up with him in the kitchen while everyone else was in the living room, mourning the death of her parents.

* * *

The screaming of the sirens broke Matt from his thoughts and he watched as a third fire truck pulled up. The house, which he loved more than his own, was engulfed in flames. He inched closer to the house, looking for Elena among the people standing around, but she wasn't there. His heart stopped for a moment, thinking that she was _in_ the house, burning up - literally - with grief, but then realized that Damon and Stefan would never allow that to happen. He then thought of Jeremy, lying dead upstairs, when a horrifying thought trickled in, causing him to stumble towards the sidewalk.

Throughout the day, he'd heard all of them whispering about cover-ups and cover stories and he'd had to stifle the urge to punch someone. His best friend was dead and Caroline and Stefan were trying to figure out how to make this tragedy something it wasn't. He looked up at the flames, tears filling his eyes, as he realized that Jeremy was probably in the house, his body burning away along with any evidence of supernatural play. He fell to the pavement, slumping over in defeat, his eyes finally falling away from the flames. He didn't know which one of the vampires was responsible for the fire, but, at this moment, he didn't have the energy to care.

Eventually, he wiped the tears from his face and looking up saw that the audience watching the house burn had increased. He never really understood why people would stand and watch a house burn. Did the flames hypnotize them? Did they get some sort of thrill as they watched someone's life go up in flames? Or was it just simple relief that it wasn't their lives burning away? He didn't get it, but he did have to restrain himself, despite his exhaustion, from screaming like a madman at all of them to go home, to stop staring and just leave, so he could watch, alone, as the last parts of his childhood went up in flames.

fin

**Thanks so much for reading! Reviews are always welcome, especially for stories written in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping!**


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